Artist of the month: Brielle Duflon

Some we choose; others are unavoidable; but in the end, among them are those we decide to show the world and those we do not. What are they? They’re the different variants that make up identity. This is the theme that runs through the work of this emerging artist who, through her surrealist brushstrokes, seeks to capture her feelings and her particular and distinctive approach to the identity of being.

Brielle Duflon was born in Texas and eight months later arrived in La Antigua Guatemala. For the next 17 years she lived in this city, then traveled back to her home country, where she spent a year serving the community before entering the University of Virginia to study engraving. But it was in Italy where she began her oil-painting studies.

The daughter of artists – her mother a painter and her father a photographer – she grew up in the world of art, and with her parents’ support and influence, her artistic horizons were expanded. She tells us of her love of photography, but that the medium is more personal than competitive. Her other interests include black-and-white engraving, mosaics, writing, and painting.

Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele can all be found among her artistic influences. “Art is one of the few things that attracts very different people. In other contexts, almost none of them would be where they are,” she tells us.

“The process of art has always been very important to me, as much as the final product.” Her father always worked with wood which grew nearby, and this exposure to woodworking brought out her natural abilities with the medium, making carving and engraving important parts of her artistic expression.

“This year I wanted to work more with paintings, partly because I don’t have everything I need for my engravings, but also because I wanted to paint the things I love about Guatemala and Central America – the climate, the sun, the colors, fruits and flowers – the things which cannot be represented well in black and white. Color is required for these, so now I’m working in oil on wood,” she says of her current projects.

Regarding her latest works, Brielle tells us about the core on which her oeuvre is built: “My paintings are about identity, but from a different approach since identities are created by different variables. Some are unavoidable, like family, race, that sort of thing. Some we decide to add to our own identity, while others we choose not to show to the rest of the world. This is a part of who we are, because identity truly involves what we decide to show others.”

On October 12, Brielle’s first independent exhibition, entitled “La Ecuación del Ser” (“The Equation of Self”) will open at 5 PM at the Panza Verde Gallery (MAP L4).